The Internet has become a critical platform for electronic communication and dissemination of information. The Internet services many people around the world in a seemingly endless capacity. We rely on the Internet for information, service, business, entertainment, social, political, and perhaps activities that may not even be thought of yet.
The power and convenience of the Internet also bring potential danger to young children using the Internet. The COPPA privacy initiative helps to protect children from exposing unnecessary personal information by requiring online service operators to follow a very strict privacy requirement.
COPPA stands for the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) and is a United States federal law, located at 15 U.S.C. §6501-6506 (Pub.L. 105-277, 112 Stat. 2581-728, enacted Oct. 21, 1998). COPPA is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety. COPPA regulation requires online service operators to obtain verifiable parental consent prior to collecting personal information from children less than 13 years of age. Such regulation puts heavy burden on online service operators to find a cost-effective method to obtain verifiable consent from the parents. Many online service operators may potentially spend extensive funds and extensive time to meet COPPA regulation or forgo this business segment altogether.
Existing systems try to obtain parental consent by verifying an adult using credit card or similar adult-verifying technique. These systems usually assume a verified adult qualifies as the parent in granting consent to the child for participating in the online activity. This is not always true. While such assumption may be correct in normal cases, the effectiveness of such measure is weak for a child to circumvent the process through misunderstand or to circumvent the process in a deliberate and fraudulent manner. In such event, the online service operator fails to secure verifiable consent from the parent as required by law.
The present disclosure obtains a verifiable parental consent prior to allowing a child to participate in our online education system. This present disclosure obtains a verifiable parental consent but it is not limited to online education system and the present disclosure may apply obtaining consent for any other user identifiable website known in the art.
There is a need in the art for an online system that prevents misrepresentation, fraud and prevents unauthorized access. There is also a need in the art for a system that does not rely on one entity for a secure login. There is a need in the art for a system that correctly denies access to individuals under the age of thirteen and correctly permits certain authorized minor individuals with access.